Twenty percent of all violent crime in U.S. occurs in the workplace, injuring more than two million workers annually. More than 50 million U.S. employees feel they have been bullied on the job. If you have your own privately ran business, or you are just an employee at one, you should know the proper steps and procedures to make sure that workplace violence doesn’t occur on your watch!
The first and most effective way to prepare and prevent workplace violence is to recognize the threat. Pay attention to things like direct or indirect verbal threats, carrying concealed weapons, or paranoid behavior. Another way would be to raise a red flag. Raising a red flag generally means talking to your supervisor and discussing your concerns. Some other steps could be working with the employee that is engaging in the concerning behavior. Sometimes, a simple one-on-one conference can do the trick and prevent the issue from growing any further.
Once you recognize the warning signs, report them. The reluctance to report concerns put your workplace at risk and seriously handicaps your chances of proactively addressing behavior that could lead to violence. To help eliminate the risk of violence in the workplace, adopt and periodically update a violence policy to define acceptable behavior in your workplace. After, periodically train all your managers and employees on your workplace violence policies. This can dramatically decrease the amount of potentially violent employees come through your doors and make everyone feel at ease.
The bottom line is, workplace violence is an increasingly serious phenomenon that your organization simply cannot ignore. Failing to proactively address the problem puts your workers at risk and can ultimately end up costing your organization millions in potential liability or loss of reputation. This all boils down to one question: Is your organization ready to respond to that phone call nobody wants to receive?
Written by Amari Herring. Amari is a rising Junior at Alpharetta High School. She participated in a one-week internship position with ELS as part of the Justice Robert Benham Law Camp.
Source of information can be found here.
